Editorial Reviews

All Music Guide - Richie Unterberger

On the Who's final album with Keith Moon, their trademark honest power started to get diluted by fatigue and a sense that the group's collective vision was beginning to fade. As instrumentalists, their skills were intact. More problematic was the erratic quality of the material, which seemed torn between blustery attempts at contemporary relevance ("Sister Disco," "New Song," "Music Must Change") and bittersweet insecurity ("Love Is Coming Down"). Most problematic of all were the arrangements, heavy on the symphonic synthesizers and strings, which make the record sound cluttered and overanxious. Roger Daltrey's operatic tough-guy braggadocio in particular was ...

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Editorial Reviews

All Music Guide
- Richie Unterberger

On the Who's final album with Keith Moon, their trademark honest power started to get diluted by fatigue and a sense that the group's collective vision was beginning to fade. As instrumentalists, their skills were intact. More problematic was the erratic quality of the material, which seemed torn between blustery attempts at contemporary relevance ("Sister Disco," "New Song," "Music Must Change") and bittersweet insecurity ("Love Is Coming Down"). Most problematic of all were the arrangements, heavy on the symphonic synthesizers and strings, which make the record sound cluttered and overanxious. Roger Daltrey's operatic tough-guy braggadocio in particular was beginning to sound annoying on several cuts. Yet Pete Townshend's better tunes -- "Music Must Change," "Love Is Coming Down," and the anthemic title track -- continued to explore the contradictions of aging rockers in interesting, effective ways. Whether due to Moon's death or not, it was the last reasonably interesting Who record. The 1996 CD reissue adds five previously unreleased alternate takes and demos.

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Keith's last

The album is all over the place but it does have the great title track and it is the last album Moon made with the group so for those reasons it is an essential Who album. Not everything here is great, but enough of the songs are good enough to make this one worth owning.

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Anonymous

Posted October 1, 2010

Good but Townshend's Heart was out of it

It has great tracks such as "sister disco" and "who are you" and "new song" and the "music must change". However, those songs were meant for the aborted lifehouse projects which would be compiled later in Pete Townshend's Lifehouse Chronicles which you can buy on his website. Lifehouse was the supposed follow-up to Tommy and has 8 of the 9 songs from Who's next. Of course the songs listed above are the better tracks but during this time Pete kept drinking and gradually leaving the Who so to speak. He just didn't care anymore. If you read the liner notes you'll see why "who are you" is named that way.

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Anonymous

Posted October 1, 2010

A Superb Album Before Keith Fought His Way To Heaven

John Entwistle, the band's bassist, wrote a lot of songs (many of 'em sung by Roger Daltrey) like "Had Enough" and "905." He began experimenting with the synthesizer for the first time as well. I am proud that Keith Moon made sure the Who's audience would give their last hurrahs to this album before his death. "Trick of the Light" (also written by Entwistle) is a wonderful track, because Pete Townshend explained that Entwistle's 8-string bass solo "sounded like a musical Mack truck." "Trick" could have paved references to songs such as Pink's "18 Wheeler" (Pete's quote on John's bass solo--18-wheeler trucks have a big sound) and Supertramp's "Rudy" (although recorded and released four years prior to this album; same quote as above--but, as the bridge begins, the guitar solo, played by Roger Hodgson, sounds like a musical train)

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